A new game was released on June 11, 2025. It had already drawn a massive amount of attention from gamers prior to launch, largely because it came from a studio founded by Leslie Benzies, a former producer at Rockstar North, and promised a third-person open-world action experience somewhat reminiscent of GTA. Yet, reality proved rather grim upon release. Scoring a dismal 39 on Metacritic (and a truly baffling 28 for the PS5 version), the worst game of 2025has officially claimed its throne. That title is, of course, MindsEye.

MindsEye is set in Redrock, a fictional near-future desert metropolis where robots handle menial labour and algorithmic visual implants attempt to foster a curious coexistence between humanity and machines. The protagonist, Jacob Diaz, is a former special ops soldier carrying a rather bizarre neural implant lodged inside the brain following some mysterious incident. The core gameplay loop revolves around third-person gunfights during campaign missions and cruising around the city in various vehicles. Drone-assisted artillery strikes, reconnaissance via the MindsEye implant, and robot hacking are also part of the toolkit.

At first glance, you might reckon the overarching lore and setting sound genuinely charming. Initial impressions only reinforce this; unlike the typical neon-drenched cyberpunk aesthetic, this grounded, gritty near-future city feels wonderfully atmospheric. Little touches like contact-lens smartphones immediately catch the eye and pull you deeper into the immersion. In fact, your first hour with MindsEye makes it jolly difficult to see why it copped such brutal reviews. The opening cinematics and camera work even boast a cinematic flair.

Dig just a wee bit deeper, however, and the cracks begin to show. MindsEye's biggest issue is its systemic lack of cohesion across the board. Normally, when we talk about a game's 'polish', we mean a few bits of content feel a bit rushed, sparse, or unrefined. With MindsEye, it is rather different. Every single piece of content, system, story beat, and line of dialogue feels half-baked. To put it bluntly, it just doesn't feel finished.

Naturally, the element earning the harshest criticism from reviewers is the campaign's pacing and its rather limp connection to the game world. MindsEye sets up this vast, seemingly alluring open-world playground, only to leave you with absolutely bugger-all to do in it. The story campaign is fiercely linear, refusing to give you any breathing room to explore other districts. Even if you manage to wander off, the world offers precious little interaction outside of minor side missions. The city ends up feeling like an empty facade.

To make matters worse, the campaign missions enforce excruciatingly strict parameters. Stray even slightly from the objective, and the game instantly slaps you with a mission failure screen. Take car chases, for example: if your vehicle pauses for a split second or drifts too far from the target, it is straight back to the checkpoint. In firefights, accidentally grazing a civilian results in an instant fail. It is essentially the dreaded 'synchronisation failure' from the classic Assassin's Creed series, awkwardly shoehorned into an open-world sandbox.

One might hope that a campaign with such draconian rules would at least boast stellar production values and a gripping narrative. Sadly, no. First off, it is plagued by bugs. At launch, cars would randomly launch into the stratosphere, enemies would freeze in place, and mission objectives would vanish into thin air. The campaign structure itself is painfully monotonous: drive to a waypoint, shoot some blokes, watch a cutscene, repeat. Driving makes up an overwhelming chunk of the playtime, while combat boils down to tedious cycles of popping into cover and firing, making the whole affair terribly drab. Toss in completely random minigames that kill the narrative momentum—such as a frantic CPR rhythm game triggered when trying to revive someone who just passed out from an explosion—and you have a recipe for confusion.

The heavy focus on driving also copped heavy flak. The roads are chronically congested, making navigation a headache, and vehicles handle like they are skating on butter—the slightest bump or cheeky drift sends them sliding wildly out of control. Pursuit sequences are downright bizarre; enemy cars move at impossible speeds and act like unstoppable bulldozers, ploughing through traffic without taking a scratch. Complaints about the driving mechanics were so widespread that the developers eventually had to patch in a feature allowing players to simply skip to their destinations.

Combine stiff animations and lacklustre gunplay feedback with utterly clueless enemy AI, and you are left with a profoundly dull shooting gallery. While the feeble audio design for weapon impacts has been tweaked across multiple updates up to version 8.2, the animations and AI pathfinding still belong in a bygone era, well beneath the standards of 2026. Enemies still struggle to locate the player's position, often standing idly in one spot waiting to be picked off.

If that were the end of it, MindsEye would still have comfortably earned its sub-50 Metacritic score. What truly tanked the game's reputation among the community, however, was the studio head's rather combative PR approach. Mark Gerhard, co-CEO of developer Build a Rocket Boy, dismissed pre-release negativity as a "coordinated sabotage campaign by critics and players trying to pull the game down," which naturally invited even more scrutiny.

Unsurprisingly, MindsEye limped out of the gate on Steam with a 'Mixed' (48% positive) reception. To their credit, a steady stream of patches has managed to nudge recent reviews up to a 'Mixed' (63% positive) standing. Unfortunately, with developer Build a Rocket Boy having entered massive layoffs alongside administrationproceedings, hoping for any meaningful future patches or sequels is wishful thinking.

So, how did it end up releasing in such a rough state? While the exact reasons remain murky, insiders suggest that MindsEye was originally conceived as a spin-off project within Everywhere before its direction was completely overhauled. Everywhere was intended as an ambitious content platform and game hybrid being cooked up by Build a Rocket Boy—much like Minecraft or GTA Online, designed to let players build and share their own worlds. MindsEye was initially planned simply as a narrative-driven game playable within that ecosystem.

However, for reasons yet unconfirmed, MindsEye severed ties in 2024, signing a publishing deal with IO Interactive—the folks behind the Hitman series—to launch as a standalone title. Given that Everywhere has reportedly been in development for nearly eight years, it is hard not to wonder if a rather rocky development cycle finally spilled out into the open.